Simon's Return
New York City
Office of Temporal Services
October 22nd, 2035
Simon Doyle stepped back through the temporal field. His primary mission had been a success, Deschile had been saved, the present as he knew it had been spared the calamity that the Garret Ward had been sent back to set in motion. Speaking of whom, he would have to go back and roll him up. Try to clean up the mess that had been made.
One of the nice things about time travel, now that he knew whom Ward was, they could check the time stream for anomalies and figure where he first entered the 21st century and stop him before he got started. If nothing else, get close enough to him to plant a temporal tracker so they can yank him back to the present. Find out who he is working for. There were so many extremist groups tied to the fascists from the energy wars who were still active.
He had preserved the timeline, as much as would possible. His personal mission however, the one minor thing he wanted to change.
He had tried to prevent more than just the major temporal incursion, he had wanted to do so much more than that. He had met Richard Castle...and Kate Beckett easily enough, but too many things had gone wrong.
He had been caught at the crime scene, so she had seen him as a suspect, and then as a nutcase. Nothing he said had even made a dent in her after that. She wouldn't take him seriously. Richard Castle might have believed him, but he was following Kate's lead, so he wouldn't listen either. Revealing his real last name would only have made them more suspicious of his motives.
He had to try. Had to try to prevent the personal tragedy that came later.
She was waiting for him when he came out of processing.
"I'm sorry, mom, I couldn't get her to listen." he said, his head bowed with shame, "Once I was caught at the crime scene, that was all there was to it. She shut me down whenever I tried to talk to them."
"I know, Simon, I know, you did the best you could."
Senator Kate Beckett pulled her eldest son in for a massive bear hug. She had hoped to spare Rick the harm that came years after that incident.
Pi had been a plant by the fascists...sent back in time to insinuate himself into their lives, get close to Alexis. When she was a junior senator, years later, he struck. They had sought to influence her vote on the energy bill placed before her in the senate, and had threatened her family.
Alexis was the only member of her family not under her direct protection. She had refused a protection detail of her own, because the secret service made Pi nervous. When she had refused to be swayed, to be pressured into voting against the energy bill, they made good on their threat.
Pi attacked Alexis in the bedroom the two of them shared. Beaten and tortured her so savagely over the course of three days that she had needed surgery, scarred her so deeply emotionally that she had been in therapy ever since. She was only now beginning to recover. It was why Richard Castle stopped writing detective novels and moved to serious literature.
Simon remembered as a teenager, when they would go to see her how she would cry every time she saw him. She had been pregnant with Pi's baby and had miscarried because of what he'd done. Simon wasn't allowed to kill anyone in the past, he had sworn an oath to do no harm to the timeline. But he had wanted to track the man down and kill him himself while he had been there.
Now Simon Doyle Castle wouldn't be able to approach his parents again, not before it was too late. And short of a DNA test to prove who he was his mother in that time period would likely never believe him.
It was a hard pill to swallow. His older sister had deserved better.